"Be very afraid?" An advent sermon
A sermon by Kim FabriciusDo you like horror films? I do. Good ones I mean. (Angie doesn’t even like the good ones, so I have to watch them when she’s out or gone to bed. Then I turn the lights off and wat

Summer holiday fiction list
Now that the teaching year has ended here, I've begun my programme of self-rejuvenation through fiction. So far, my summer holiday reading list includes the following novels:Patrick Süskind, Perfume (1985) [finished: probably the best novel I've read all year]Richard Flanagan, The Unknown Terrorist (2006) [finished]David Lodge, Changing Places (1975) [finished]David Lodge, Small World (1984) [finished]David Lodge, Nice Work (1988)David Lodge, Therapy (1995)David Lodge, Deaf Sentence (2008)Jonathan Littell, The Ki

Covenant precedes creation
Much of my own research and writing over the past year has focused on the Barthian theme of the priority of salvation over creation. God's act in Christ "precedes" the creation of the world, and is its foundation. Just this morning, I came across this nice passage:The history of salvation is not a small event, on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens by chance on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive for creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist – the encounter between God and his creature. In this sense, salvation history, the covenant, precedes creation. During the Hellenistic pe

Homeward, these shoes worn to paper: thin as the reason I left here so young
Why Rowan Williams is the only real theologianWhy Benedict XVI is the only real theologianA new article by Cynthia Nielsen: "What Has Mozart to Do with Coltrane?"Some

Holy Spirit: readings and poems
As mentioned in an earlier post, this semester I taught an undergraduate course on the Holy Spirit. There were